The David Lynch Collection
81 comments
·May 30, 2025Duanemclemore
loehnsberg
The La Marzocco espresso maker at $7000 is cheaper than buying a new one.
Duanemclemore
They actually point the retail value out in that listing. Lol. The idea of shopping David Lynch's estate sale like you were looking for deals is one I think he'd chuckle at.
Edited to add - I think $1,200 for two Mr. Coffees is a little over retail though...
blitzar
> "A rare look behind the red curtain"
OMG he had a 10 year old Sony camera and a coffee table just like me! SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB cards the choice of me and David Lynch.
The equipment might be the same, but the line between me and genius is wide.
petetnt
If anyone wants another glimpse behind the red curtain, I highly recommend the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life from 2016. It focuses on David Lynches upbringing and formative years as an artist up until the release of Eraserhead that completely changed the direction (or maybe rocketed forward?) of his career. It also shows Lynch working at this workshop, showing some of the tools you see on auction here too.
The collection has some absolute grails too for any fan, like the original script to Twin Peaks as Northwest Passage.
RIP to true master.
_elephant
I had the same feeling. Scrolling through it felt like watching the outtakes of a creative life. What really struck me wasn’t the expensive items, but the strangely human scale of everything. The handmade furniture, the dusty coffee makers, the fragments of ideas that never turned into stories. As someone who builds narrative systems, this felt more intimate than any documentary. You're not just seeing what Lynch created. You're seeing what he lived with, and what he quietly left behind. That’s what made me pause.
lou1306
It really struck me that we both owned the same edition of Crying of Lot 49. Something about the democratization/massification of culture, I guess.
pnut
"damn fine cup of coffee" is one of the top Twin Peaks memes.
frereubu
I'm never sure about the estimates on auctions like this, but the fact that so many things are going way over the estimate reminds me of the Sotheby's auction of items from the failed Pharmacy bar by Damien Hirst where things were going for at least four times the estimate. I could sort of understand that for specially-made things like cocktail glasses, but it was also true of really mundane items. Clearly I just have a difference sense of value to someone else, but the fact that a really basic filter coffee maker is going for $1,750 feels pretty weird to me.
bathtub365
Their estimates just seemed flat wrong in many cases. A high end espresso maker owned by David Lynch was never going to go for half its retail price like they suggested
wesselbindt
Taxes, maybe? Buy a fork for 1750, have it appraised by a friend to be worth much more than that, donate your million dollar fork to a museum to write it off.
jazzyjackson
It's because Lynch was an avid coffee drinker so it's a cute thing to buy, lots of people have enough money to spend thousands of dollars on a cute thing.
This is the auction setting the market value, no one is going to appraise the junk at 100x what it last sold for at auction
andrewchilds
It’s not just David Lynch’s own coffee drinking. Making coffee (“there was a fish in the percolator!”) and drinking coffee was one of the most memorable aspects of the original Twin Peaks TV series.
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sneak
Being able to use David Lynch’s coffee maker each morning would bring me a lot more joy than my $3000 Macbook Pro has.
me4502
I truly hope that some of this collection, such as annotated scripts/etc, eventually make their way into film or media museums.
There’s so many interesting items in here otherwise
Duanemclemore
I can only imagine that he pledged his actual papers to a museum or University film school a long time ago. It's not uncommon to do that well before you pass away. And you / your estate gets a very substantial tax break for it.
So I would -definitely- guess this is what's left after anything of scholarly or creative value was taken care of.
I mean - the sale of two of the three adjacent properties he owns just off Mulholland would be enough to keep those inheriting his estate going for a while on their own. I doubt "everything must go" to pay off creditors or something...
Anyway - yeah I can only imagine the actual papers are at a scholarly institution.
qmr
> very substantial tax break
How would this be valued precisely?
Duanemclemore
I've never gone through the process, but I imagine it would involve establishing the historical importance of the person who owned them, establishing their significance as instruments of the thing for which the person is known, and establishing their authenticity. Then from that an appraisal would be done and the proper documentation generated that would protect the donor from accusations of tax fraud. The donor and recipient would both agree upon the language of these documents and possibly on an officially recognized value for the donation.
Klaster_1
Wow, that's a load of items. Is it normal to own so much stuff in US or that's a what a typical well-off person accumulates over their life time?
Duanemclemore
He owned three adjacent homes in the Hollywood Hills. He ran his film production company and musical endeavors out of them. So these aren't the random collectibles of a hoarder, the vast majority of this stuff would have been used for these business purposes.
Hilift
No, not this much, and for one person. Lynch was a bit of a mystery. The table router, saws, woodshop tools, the cabinet making books. Lynch was sometimes hands on for productions. A lot of the furniture is cool too. Like 1950's period pieces, but custom made. He had four wives and one partner (Isabella Rossellini) and four children. We probably never saw the real David Lynch. A lot of the stuff could just be accumulations from a lot of shopping trips.
"Eraserhead was finally finished in 1976. Lynch said that not a single reviewer of the film understood it as he intended."
Lynch produced Eraserhead on a shoestring budget ($100k) along with Sissy Spacek and her husband, Jack Fisk.
jazzyjackson
You see how big houses get in America? All the houses are FULL of stuff
Relevant George Carlin bit on the subject: https://youtu.be/JLoge6QzcGY?
TrackerFF
Important to keep in mind that Lynch was a filmmaker, musician, and artist - and probably 2/3 of the listings are items from his studios.
rxtexit
Yes, as an American who is an absolute minimalist, people here own so much junk.
It is not just well off people, it is practically everyone. Everyone has an enormous amount of junk. Well off people just have more pricey junk.
chneu
Americans often have to rent multiple storage units to store their stuff. This happens after their garages begin to overflow with junk. Id say like 75% of Americans don't use their garage for their car, it's just storage for shit.
A lot of Americans also buy 5th wheel recreational vehicles(caravans) that they can't store at home so they have to store them at designated facilities. It's extremely common to see run-down caravans parked beside houses or in the driveway, too. It's crazy. People buy em, never use em, and then they rot. Same with boats and off road vehicles; sitting there rotting at storage facilities or next to the garage.
Americans own an INSANE amount of stuff. I'm American and I find it crazy how much shit people own. Remember that per capita Americans are the highest consumers in the world and it's not even close.
It has to do with the American exceptionalism thinking. That Americans are special and therefore more entitled to over consume. Manifest Destiny baby, god chose America! The extreme capitalism in America reinforces this mentality. The amount of crap an American owns is a status symbol. A lot of Americans are proud to own stuff they never use.
In the spring time, when folks start opening their garages, i like to see how much winter junk people have accumulated. A month or two ago it was comedic watching people move stuff out of their garages to reorganize so they could then put it all back.
d0gsg0w00f
> It has to do with the American exceptionalism thinking. That Americans are special and therefore more entitled to over consume.
This is quite a leap, and you're giving people too much credit for "consumption as a guiding principle".
Most people just have extra income and are bombarded with messages about how something will make their lives better. They try it out. They're stuck with it.
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chneu
They try it out because Americans love owning stuff as status symbols. Gotta keep up with the Joneses with our "grass fed" steak dindins, 3rd truck, boat, rv and garage full of junk. We are hyper-capitalist and we use the manifest destiny/conquerer mentality to justify it. Advertising drives this mentality into people from a young age to the point they don't even realize it. The word "deprogramming" might be apt here.
Even if one doesn't consciously think about or admit this, it is everywhere in American culture, especially in rural-cosplaying folks. If someone isn't aware of it, and working to check their consumption, then they're probably engaging in it, unfortunately.
Americans have endless excuses for our overconsumption because it allows us to either justify or ignore the consequences of our actions.
Even mentioning overconsumption will result in many Muricans getting mad because you're challenging their privilege.
A really great example of this is the typical american's reaction to environmental causes. Look at how american media portrays environmentalists and reacts with pure vitriol most of the time (fortunately this has changed quite a lot in recent years but it's still pretty bad). Environmentalists challenge the privileged mindset of american culture. What did american culture do? We pumped up beef and dairy production while portraying it as "the natural way", "the carnivore diet", the "caveman diet" etc as if overconsumption is how it should be and has always been. Then American culture portrayed vegans/vegetarians as anemic weaklings, which is basically an attack on people challenging the privilege to overconsume. Make the enemy look bad instead of addressing the issue.
Once one starts to look for this stuff they'll see it is everywhere in US culture. I grew up in a town of 500 people on a farm/ranch in the US West. I was very conservative. I bought into all this shit for 20+ years. Then I traveled and talked to people outside the US with different viewpoints. It is really obvious how bad it is in the US once you start to pay attention and stop buying into this privileged mindset.
We can't begin to improve this until we can even acknowledge it. There are many forces in this country working to prevent people from even acknowledging this. Look at conservative media, especially. It's suuuuper obvious.
potato3732842
>Id say like 75% of Americans don't use their garage for their car, it's just storage for shit.
>A lot of Americans also buy 5th wheel recreational vehicles(caravans) that they can't store at home so they have to store them at designated facilities.
I am involved in this business and I assure you you are vastly over estimating the fraction of the population that pays for storage.
chneu
I think you're misinterpreting what I said.
I said 75% of people with garages likely don't put their cars in their garages.
This is unrelated to the number of RV owners who store their caravan at a storage facility. I didn't talk about that and didn't specify a figure there. I just said people buy RVs and some people pay to store them.
reconnecting
I like his choice: starting from the La Marzocco at home, through the Hasselblad camera, and all the scroll saw, drill press, etc. Every man's essentials.
But I was surprised by his choice of Bang & Olufsen for music. For example, his Sennheiser headphones are mostly for hearing sound as it is, while B&O always tries to 'enhance' sound in their own way. It doesn’t match much.
ch_sm
> But I was surprised by his choice of Bang & Olufsen for music. For example, his Sennheiser headphones are mostly for hearing sound as it is, while B&O always tries to 'enhance' sound in their own way. It doesn’t match much.
I feel like I can identify with that. I have a pair of AKG studio headphones for recording music and listening for "mistakes" in mixes, but otherwise mostly B&O Hi-Fi speakers. To me, the sound is more "immersive" and emotionally captivating than e.g. studio monitors, and they still have lots of detail. (Plus, there’s the issue of them looking as nice as they do and being very easy to set up — it makes them easy to live with). Just my 2 cents.
dole
imho, people buy B&O for the design, not for the sound quality
wtk
Could have been a gift, or experiment!
kriro
Might as well ask here because there will be some fans around. What was his relation to Weinstein? I always interpreted Mulholland Drive as a critique of Weinstein like things going on in Hollywood.
jiriro
If you buy all this stuff – does that make you David Lynch?
joeevans1000
And now direct your attention to my APC Smart-UPS 1500 Battery Backup plus Emulex 355 SAN Storage Switch for MAC.
Yes... once owned by David Lynch himself.
nicholasbraker
Almost tempted to do a bid on the Black Lodge Style Red Curtain and Zig-Zag Rug. Almost.. ;-)
padjo
The man sure owned a lot of coffee makers.
chneu
Lynch famously used daily routine to allow his creativity to flow.
He drank, according to him, 10-20 cups of coffee per day.
He even had his own blend available for purchase.
sidcool
It's tempting. But too overpriced
null
"A rare look behind the red curtain of one of the most influential artists of our time..."
Even if you're in the "just looking" category like me, this is such a great glimpse into the life and creative process of a true original. I loved going through this because it ranges the gamut from completely banal stuff like light stands to the personal like custom furniture he made by hand. And then there's stuff to the just plain wacky - a couple Mr. Coffee coffeemakers currently going for $1,250!?
Anyway - thought I might not be the only David Lynch fan out there, and you may get a kick out of this.